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Great teachers are an inspiration to their students and admired by their peers. This year’s winners of the Columbia Distinguished Faculty Awards were nominated by department chairs and their fellow faculty members. Their students have gone on to do extraordinary research, win awards or become professors themselves.

Michael E. Pippenger, Columbia University’s Dean of Undergraduate Global Programs and Assistant Vice President for International Education, has been appointed Vice President and Associate Provost for Internationalization at the University of Notre Dame.Pippenger will lead Notre Dame International, the university’s global initiative, overseeing efforts to broaden the Notre Dame’s international culture, programs, reach and reputation through expanded international research, collaborative projects and strategic relationships with global partners.

Seventeen first-year students in Columbia College, The Fu Foundation School of Engineering and Applied Science and General Studies have received 2016 Presidential Global Fellowships. The students, whose academic interests range from French to Portuguese, from Arabic to Chinese, from anthropology to art history, and from political science and human rights to sustainability, were selected from a pool of more than 160 for the University’s undergraduate global summer fellowship program.

Anuke Ganegoda CC’18, an applied mathematics and computer science/mathematics double major; Sahir Jaggi SEAS’17, a biomedical engineering major with minors in computer science and entrepreneurship; and Mathew Pregasen SEAS’18, a computer engineering major with a minor in computer science, have won first place in the Columbia Venture Competition’s Undergraduate Challenge for their mathematics technology, Parsegon, which renders mathematical equations without the need to learn a coding language. The award, which comes with $25,000 in funding, was announced by Dean James J. Valentini on April 29.

Stephen S. Trevor CC’86 and Ronnie D. Planalp BUS’86 have given a $2.5 million gift to Columbia, which includes $2 million to establish the Planalp Trevor Dean’s Curriculum Innovation Fund for Entrepreneurship at Columbia College. The Fund will provide permanent support for the faculty teaching and the students enrolled in entrepreneurship courses support, accelerate, and motivate the Columbia community’s programs and culture around innovation, creativity, and entrepreneurship at Columbia College. Their gift to the College is part of the Core to Commencement campaign.

Columbia College has announced the names of 94 seniors who will be initiated into Phi Beta Kappa, the national honor society, on Tuesday, May 17. The students were chosen by a faculty selection committee of Phi Beta Kappa members based on the breadth, depth and rigor of their academic programs, as well as recommendations from faculty members who have worked closely them.

Columbia College mourns the loss of Bill Campbell CC’62, TC’64, former chair of the University Trustees and former captain and coach to the Columbia Lions football team, who passed away on Monday at the age of 75. “We are devastated by the loss of Bill Campbell,” said James J. Valentini. “Bill was a remarkable entrepreneur, a dedicated and generous Columbia College alumnus; and a committed friend, adviser and mentor to me. He enriched the lives of many at Columbia and throughout the world and he will be missed by all who knew him.”

Max Lawton CC’16, a Russian Literature and Culture major who was raised in Brussels, Chicago and Milwaukee, has received the prestigious Clarendon Scholarship from the University of Oxford to pursue a Master of Philosophy (MPhil) in Modern Languages, where he will focus on Russian literature.